Canary Wharf
by Miles333
Summary: Where was Torchwood Cardiff during the events of Army of Ghosts and Doomsday, when Cybermen and Daleks suddenly appeared in the sky? Incidentally, three of its members were right in the middle of all the action... Some knowledge of DW needed to read this.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Torchwood_, or even _Doctor Who_. D:

**A/N:** This takes place before Gwen and Ianto joined the team. My first pre-_Everything Changes_ one shot! Yay, me! Okay, enough rambling. Enjoy the story. :D

**Summary:** Where was Torchwood Cardiff during the events of _Army of Ghosts_ and _Doomsday_, when Cybermen and Daleks suddenly appeared in the sky? Incidentally, three of its members were right in the middle of all the action... Some knowledge of _DW_ needed to read this.

**Characters: **Jack, Owen, Tosh, and Suzie.

**Timeline: **Pre-_Everything Changes_.

**Spoilers:** _The Parting of the Ways _(_DW_),_ Army of Ghosts _(_DW_), _Doomsday _(_DW_)_, Everything Changes, Fragments_.

* * *

Jack slowly hung the phone back into its cradle and pushed back his desk chair. Standing, he rubbed his throbbing ear and heaved a sigh. Despite the fact that he couldn't die, that conversation with the Prime Minister had just about nearly killed him dead. The man simply wasn't happy about the sudden increase of ghosts, and the fact that they were gathering around important places like Buckingham Palace.

Then again, who would be? From what he'd said (or rather, _yelled_), he had been getting countless phone calls from concerned citizens throughout London all day long. And the Prime Minister had apparently felt the need to yell at Jack for five minutes to account for each and every call.

Sometimes the captain couldn't help wishing that Torchwood was still a _secret_ organization. Saving the world had been so much simpler back in the old days.

Striding over to the door of his office, Jack pushed it open and strode down to join the others in the main area of the Hub. Suzie was bent over her workstation, messing around with that alien glove they'd found the other day. Tosh was decoding a set of alien files, her face alit with that strange glow she got sometimes. And Owen…well, he was asleep on the ratty sofa, apparently deciding that the hangover he had been nursing all day was simply too much to bear.

"All right, people, listen up!" Jack clapped his hands to emphasize the appropriately loud statement. Owen, as Jack had intended, was startled awake, and fell to the floor with various limbs flailing wildly. "To put it bluntly, the Prime Minister is pissed. Really. Pissed."

"Oh, what else is new?" Owen muttered sarcastically, pulling himself back onto the sofa and rubbing one hand over his eyes.

"He's not really happy about the increase of the ghost population," Jack continued, as if the medic had never even spoken, "and he wants us to do something about it."

"Why doesn't he just contact the London branch? They're the ones that he usually calls to clean up the current mess," Suzie pointed out sourly, glancing up from her tinkering. "So high-to-do and all that."

"Yeah, well, London seems to be at the center of the little ghost problem," Jack stated, folding his arms over his chest. "And Yvonne Hartman 'can't come to the phone at the moment' whenever he calls. So that leaves everything up to us, team."

"What about Glasgow?" Owen mumbled, still half asleep.

"You know how they are, Owen," Jack said sternly. "Like I said, _we_ need to do something about the ghosts before this situation turns even worse."

"How exactly could it get worse?" Suzie asked, with a sadistic curiosity that only she could pull off.

"Well first off, the so-called ghosts could start murdering every person on the planet," he stated calmly. "And I'm still not convinced that these things aren't Gelth, which would make things a hell of a lot worse."

Tosh minimized her partially-decoded document, bringing up a diagram. "I've been running diagnostics on the locations with the most ghosts, cross-referencing all the data we've got on them so far with the times they're scheduled to show up each day."

"And what did you come up?" Jack asked, waiting to be impressed. He knew that Toshiko Sato was good, whether she admitted it or not, and still wasn't regretting rescuing her from the clutches of UNIT.

"Well, I traced the residential energy readings, and found out that they're definitely being broadcasted from somewhere," she reported, dark eyes wide behind her stylish pink frames.

"I thought you couldn't trace the readings," Suzie said suspiciously.

"That was then. A few minutes ago, a burst of compressed information came through. I think one of the ghosts was tampered with, apparently with something more high-tech than a computer system, since I had trouble decoding it properly, sending out a detonation of temporal feedback."

Jack nodded. "What else?"

She gave a little smile, obviously pleased with whatever she was about to say next. "I managed to trace the energy to a neighborhood in central London, then traced it from there to the actual source. And I came up with a possible location."

"What are you waiting for? Applause? Bloody well get on with it," Owen demanded with irritation. If Jack hadn't known that he was probably still affected because of what had so tragically happened to his fiancé Katie, then he probably would have done something drastic to him.

Looking a little hurt, Tosh continued. "Torchwood London."

"What about it?" Suzie wanted to know, actually abandoning the glove for a few moments.

"No, that's where the main signal seems to be coming from. The Torchwood Tower in London," she said.

Jack's eyes sparked with interest. "So you're telling me that Torchwood One might be the cause of our phantom issues?"

"I think so," she said. "From what I can gather, the energy around the ghosts seems to be projected. So they're being projected from London. But I've never seen readings like those before, so I'm not really…" She shrugged apologetically.

Jack patted her encouragingly on the shoulder. "Great work, Toshiko. Well, it sounds like we're in for a trip to London."

"I had a feeling you were going to say that." Suzie stood, and regretfully began packing the glove away into its box, to store under her desk again.

Jack started back up the steps to his office, calling over his shoulder. "Tosh, you stay here and try to find out more info on the ghosts and our illusive Torchwood One. Suzie, finish up there and head to the SUV. Owen, get your butt in gear; you're with Suzie and I."

"_What_?" the medic exclaimed. "I was going to study that bloody book of alien physiology you gave me, Harkness!"

"Right," Jack snorted. "Before or after you finished sleeping off your hangover?" Before Owen could answer, the captain stepped into his office and grabbed his coat from the back of a folding chair. Then he strode to his desk, pulled out a drawer, and got out his relic pistol. Tucking it into his belt and shrugging into his coat, he headed out to join the others.

* * *

It was nearly two hours later by the time the Torchwood SUV was rolling through the eerily empty London streets. The roads on the way there had been absolutely packed, with both vehicles and wandering ghosts. But now, the streets held scarcely anyone. Apparently, most of the Londoners were sensibly choosing to stay at home, safely away from the millions of ghosts.

"Okay. Thanks, Tosh." Jack turned off his end of the communication device. He was sitting in the front passenger seat, as he had elected for Owen to get the _honour_ of driving the SUV. The medic had been in a sullen silence for most of the journey as a result, so the captain turned round in his seat to face Suzie. "She said the ghost readings have increased again, and their very makeup has changed. She also found another spasm of energy is pulsing from Torchwood Tower, already becoming more powerful than the ghosts. Something about how the second energy has been dormant for a while, and it's just now starting to wake up. Oh, and the readings are going off the charts, too."

"Great," Suzie said cynically. "So basically, it's good that we went ahead and took the initiative to travel all the way here, right? Since we've got some weird energy waking up and the ghosts increasing past the human capacity for knowledge?"

"Right," Jack agreed. "Now we've just got to figure out what the hell is going on, and exactly what _Ms. Hartman_ has been hiding from the rest of us."

"If we ever get there," Suzie said serenely, smirking when she saw Owen glaring at her in the rearview mirror. "Owen's driving like a bloody pensioner."

"Oi!" he exclaimed angrily, increasing his glare a bit more. "At least I'm not obsessed with bleeding _gloves_!"

"No, just getting hammered," Suzie retorted smoothly.

Jack couldn't help noticing the strange colour that Owen's face was turning. He quickly held up both hands, becoming the impromptu peacemaker of the group. "All right. Enough fighting amongst ourselves, kids. We're supposed to be figuring out about the ghosts, rememb–"

"What the _hell_?" Owen jerked the wheel sharply to one side, sending the SUV flying into the wrong lane. Luckily, there was no oncoming traffic. Suzie, who hadn't chosen to buckle her seatbelt, went flying into the back of Jack's seat, then crumpled back into her own. Jack's neck whipped forward, forehead splitting open on the dashboard.

The SUV spun wildly, tires squealing on the pavement, then crushed against the side of a parked car. Then everything became sinisterly silent.

"Owen. What the hell was _that_ about?" Jack grunted, unbuckling his seatbelt and grimacing at both the pain in his forehead and the pain of where the seatbelt had forcefully restrained him.

The medic was fumbling dizzily with the clasp of his seatbelt, face pale and blood trickling from a gash on the side of his jaw. "Maybe the giant metal robots standing in the middle of the bleeding street?" he burst out, finally freeing himself and throwing open his door.

Jack tensed for only a second, then pulled out his gun and jumped from the passenger side door in one smooth movement. Suzie mirrored him, only a few seconds slower than he was thanks to her collision with his seat.

"What are they?" Suzie wanted to know, pointing her gun unwaveringly at the metallic creatures standing in a straight line not far away from them. Their heads were oddly shaped, with strange antennas on top, which were met in the middle to connect to small circular devices. Their eyes were empty and black, soulless. Their entire bodies was made of metal slices, fitted smoothly together to form a body with two legs, a torso, and a pair of arms. All in all, the cyborgs were terrifyingly alien to behold.

"I've heard of them, and if I'm right…they're Cybermen," Jack uttered darkly, eyes skimming over the vaguely familiar design. These metal abominations were well-known even in the futuristic year when he had been born, though highly more advanced than these tin cans.

"Are they robots or what?" Owen asked in a low voice. He was apparently sober again.

"They're humans, Owen. Or, they _were_. They used to be human beings who got their brains cut out and placed in these immortal suits of armor," Jack said bitterly, leveling his gun at one of the Cybermen. Though he doubted that mere bullets would do him any good.

"_This human shows intelligence,"_ one of the Cybermen stated in an emotionless voice, showing no ounce of the human it had once been. _"He knows of our kind. He must be taken for immediate upgrade."_

"I don't think so," Jack said decisively, cocking his pistol.

"What the bleeding hell is an _upgrade_?" Owen asked, also not taking his eyes from the metal men.

"Remember the brain thing I mentioned? _That_ would be an upgrade."

"_Humans show resistance. They are not compatible for upgrade,"_ another Cyberman said resolutely.

"_Humans must be deleted."_ A third Cyberman raised its fist towards them, beginning to chant in its monotone voice. _"Delete. Delete. Delete."_

"Run!" Jack shouted, following his own advice and taking off as fast as his legs could carry him. He knew that bullets wouldn't work on these metal monsters, and he wasn't about to show Owen and Suzie his little secret of immortality yet. He wasn't quite ready. Coat flying out behind him as he dodged down a conveniently placed alleyway, he listened for screams of agony. He heard none; instead two sets of footsteps followed right behind him, which made him mentally breathe a sigh of relief.

"Where the hell did those things come from?" Owen shouted, coming up even with Jack as they ran. "I thought we were looking for _ghosts_, Harkness!"

"So did I," Jack replied, trying to save his breath. From behind them came the robotic cries of, _"Delete! Delete! Delete!"_ He raced round a sharp corner at the end of the alley, nearly skidding straight into a man holding up a baseball bat. A shop window was shattered behind him, and he looked very guilty.

"You've got to get out of here!" Suzie gasped out to the obvious looter, glancing frantically over her shoulder.

"Why? You're no' the p'lice, are ya?" the man slurred tauntingly, flashing a set of yellowed teeth.

"Close enough," Jack stated firmly. "Now get the hell out of here while you still can!"

"Why, so ya can get all th' good stuff for yaself? I don' _think_ so, mate," the man leered.

Suzie looked like she was about to shout at the man for his stupidity, but Jack grabbed her arm instead. "Come on. We can't do anything for him. We can only save ourselves," he muttered quietly to her, giving her a meaningful look.

The cries were getting louder as the Cybermen caught up, _"Delete! Delete!"_

Suzie gave the foolish man another look, then she and her teammates continued on, running towards cover. A few moments later, a piercing scream rang out, along with a monstrous chorus: _"Human deleted!"_

* * *

About twenty minutes later, Jack, Owen, and Suzie were crouched on the rooftop of a looming building in Canary Wharf, panting for breath but safe regardless. They had somehow managed to avoid the hordes of Cybermen that patrolled the streets, viciously killing any human deemed "incompatible for upgrade". Now they overlooked Torchwood Tower, trying to determine a plan. Unfortunately, Torchwood One seemed to be as much under the control of the Cybermen as the rest of the planet.

"Tosh, what have you got?" Jack touched his communicator as it beeped shrilly into his ear.

"_Jack, the energy readings of the ghosts just fluctuated. And then they…well, they vanished,"_ the Asian woman said hesitantly. _"There's no sign of anymore ghosts on the entire planet, but I'm now picking up some even stronger signals. And that other signal from Torchwood Tower just increased another fifty percent."_

Jack swore under his breath before replying, "Well, where have the ghosts gone? Any possible way of finding out, Toshiko?"

"_It's possible that the theoretical control that Torchwood London has over them has been shut off,"_ she replied hesitantly. _"Or maybe the ghosts evolved into another stage, which is why I can't pick them up any longer."_

"Of course," Suzie said, eyes widening. "That's what those Cyberman things are. The ghosts!"

"_Cyberman?"_ Tosh sounded confused, which was very strange for her.

"Long story. We'll explain later, back at the Hub," Jack told her, strongly considering Suzie's idea as he disconnected the communicator. "Suzie, I think you just cracked the case. Maybe the Cybermen have gradually been trying to break into our world, maybe from a parallel Earth, and just now managed to regain their normal forms. Which would explain why they were perceived as 'ghosts' up until now."

"Parallel Earth?" Owen echoed skeptically.

"You believe in Weevils, alien parasites, and talking blowfish who like to steal cars and take them for joyrides, but not a parallel universe?" Jack questioned pointedly, raising his eyebrows.

Owen opened his mouth to make a retort, but Suzie spoke before he could, "Oh my God. As if bloody Cybermen from a parallel universe weren't bad enough."

Jack and Owen both turned in the direction of her gaze, towards Torchwood Tower. What Jack saw made his face go pale, and his mouth uncharacteristically drop open. Four Daleks, who had appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Four Daleks, who were carrying with them some sort of hovering pod.

"What the hell are they?" Owen asked in a low voice.

But Jack didn't answer. In his mind's eye flashed a scene from the future, a scene which had occurred for him over one hundred years earlier, far into the future. Of when he, the Doctor, and Rose had been attacked by a fleet of murdering Daleks. Of when he had…died.

_All around him, those who had been helping him defend the Game Station fell; dying, exterminated. The fierce battle cries of "Exterminate!" rang out, as did the chilling sound of their blaster rays. _

_And then he was running backwards down a never-ending corridor, shooting blindly with his gun, trying to take out as many of the damn Daleks as he could, trying to buy the Doctor time to carry out his plan. But his bullets simply bounced off them, missing their vulnerable eyestalks by miles. "For God's sake, Doctor finish that thing and _kill them_!" he shouted, backed against a wall and still firing randomly. They didn't seem threatened or even bothered by his efforts, gliding silently towards him._

_The gun stopped shooting, out of ammo. He hurriedly took the strap from his neck and tossed the piece of junk to the ground; it was useless to him now. He pulled a handgun from his pocket and fired shot after shot at the still-approaching Daleks, face a mask of grim determination._

_It, like the gun before it, was deemed useless as it ran out of bullets. He flung it away, then turned to face his death like a man. And yet he couldn't help the frantic beating of his heart, or the clammy sweat on his forehead._

"_Exterminate," the lead Dalek said calmly, its twin lights flashing as it raised its own gun._

"_I kinda figured that," he said, voice shaking even as he tried to be brave. He held his arms out, open wide, inviting them to go ahead and kill him. _

_The last thing he saw was that horrible flash of light, then he felt it completely engulf him. His body was torn apart, atom by atom; or so it felt to him in that half a second that he remained conscious. He felt his body fly limply backwards, and was dead before he even hit the wall, engulfed in blackness._

_And then, miraculously, he was alive again. _

_His eyes flashed open, taking in the feeling of life with shock and awe, and he staggered slowly to his feet. Clutching his bruised ribs, he stumbled with agonizing slowness towards where the Daleks had been. But there was nothing, only a pile of white dust._

_White _ashes_._

_He heard it at the moment, and forgot his ribs. Forgot everything else but that grating sound, the sound that meant the TARDIS was in flight. It was more chilling that a Dalek's battle cry could ever be._

_He ran, and found the TARDIS half-gone, fading from sight as he stared incredulously at it. He panted for breath, several choice words floating through his mind, all involving that damn Doctor for leaving him behind. All alone, on the empty Game Station. _

_He turned away as the TARDIS vanished completely. What the hell was he supposed to do _now_?_

"Jack? Do you know what they are?" Suzie was asking quietly, grimly, jarring him from the horrifying memories of his past. He shook his head, trying in vain to clear it, then uttered forebodingly,

"Daleks. They're Daleks."

"Do they have human brains, like the Cybermen?" was Owen's question.

Jack shook his head mutely.

"Well, what are they, then? Aliens?" Suzie prompted him impatiently.

"Daleks are the cruelest beings imaginable. They live to _exterminate_ every other race in the galaxy. And they're _supposed_ to be extinct. So whatever the hell it is that they're doing here, it's damn sure not good for the human race." Jack swallowed hard, remembering once again the feeling of excruciating death that had overtaken him as the Daleks mercilessly exterminated him.

"So I'm guessing you have experience with these guys, then," Owen noted.

"You could say that."

"Well, how can they be killed?"

"They can't be killed," Jack said flatly. "Or if there _is_ a way, then I have _no_ idea what it is." After all, he'd been dead at the time the Daleks had allegedly been defeated. And the Doctor hadn't exactly stuck around to properly explain the situation.

"There's only four of them," Suzie scoffed. "How bad can they be?"

As though on cue, the device the four Daleks had been watching over burst easily open. Out flew a Dalek. Two more. Three more. Twenty more. Seventy more. Thousands more. There were _millions_ of them.

"You always have to open your mouth, don't you, _Suzie_?" Owen snapped, like it was her fault that the Daleks had been able to stuff so many of their murderous kind into such a small box.

"Both of you just shut up," Jack ordered in a hard voice, one that made both of them obey instantly.

And the three of them watched, watched the Daleks begin shooting down at the Cybermen gathering on the ground. And the Cybermen shot back, firing wildly and occasionally hitting a building. On the ground below, innocent people screamed and ran for cover, uncountable numbers of them dying as they were engulfed in brilliant light.

After what seemed like an eternity, Jack wearily reactivated his communicator. "Toshiko."

"_Jack! I've been worried _sick_! What's going on down there?"_ she cried with unhidden concern.

"I'm going to need you to call Glasgow, tell them that we need immediate backup," Jack stated firmly, then sighed heavily. "This is one of those times that I wish we'd found Torchwood Four again."

"_All right, Jack. I'm on it."_ Tosh seemed to sense that he didn't want to talk about what was going on right then, and disconnected her end of the line with a small click.

"What the hell are we supposed to do now?" Owen asked, sounding bleak. Jack looked at him sharply; the medic had expressed the same amount of depression for several months after his fiancée had been killed, though he had slowly been getting over the pain of her death.

"We fight," Jack answered, his first death flashing again before his eyes. Along with a grim picture of Owen and Suzie meeting the same fate that he had, only…not coming back.

"How?" Suzie sounded angry at him for even considering the idea. "There's too _many_ of them, Jack. And there's only _three_ of us!"

"She's right," Owen muttered, sounding reluctant about agreeing with her. "Even with Glasgow's help, there's no way–"

And then the unthinkable happened. All the Daleks in the sky above froze, as though they'd been suspended in midair. Seconds later, the Cybermen on the ground below did the same.

"What–" Owen began, eyes narrowing.

The Daleks, as though sucked through an invisible straw, were pulled towards Torchwood Tower. The Cybermen on the ground were getting the same treatment. Soon the air was full of billions of metal shapes, all converging on Torchwood London's base. Miraculously, instead of crashing into the tower, they were sucked inside through a small hole in the wall.

And they didn't come back.

The world was bathed in complete silence, as though it were holding its breath. Then a faint light flashed from inside the tower, and the atmosphere seemed to lighten. The danger was over.

"Bloody hell," Owen said, awe in his voice. Suzie said nothing, but it was obvious that she was thinking along the same lines.

Jack stared unblinkingly at the looming building. What had just happened?

And then realization struck. Who else could pull off something so amazing? "Good work, Doctor," he murmured, not caring if Owen or Suzie thought he was talking to himself. He allowed himself a small smile. Then he turned away from the suddenly empty sky, feeling more alive than he had in years. The Doctor was still living, and he was close. The Time Lord _would_ come back and pick him someday soon, Jack just knew it. And if not, he would be ready and waiting to go, whether the Doctor liked it or not.

Half of him wanted to run down and confront the man who had left him so long ago, but he suppressed these feelings. What mattered now was his team, those that he was training to protect the world. The twenty-first century was when everything changed, and they had to be ready, no matter what the cost. For events such as what had happened today.

"Okay, kids. Let's head back to base," he said, not bothering to hide his weariness. So many people had died today, and they weren't going to come back like he had so many times.

"What?" Owen asked, tearing his eyes away from Torchwood Tower. "Just like that?"

"Just like that," Jack agreed with a brisk nod. "And we need to call Glasgow and tell them it was a false alarm. We're all-clear again."

"Shouldn't we do something?" Suzie was staring towards the bodies strewn across the ground below, a strange look on her face. "Dispose of some of the bodies?"

Jack frowned slightly, hearing an odd tone in her voice. "No, Suzie. This isn't our mess to clean up, for once. Now, let's go back. Toshiko is probably still worried about what's going on up here. We can come back after some of this dies down and get some of the technology to be catalogued."

And not so far away, the incredible sound of a TARDIS in flight grated loudly, taking its pilot on towards other adventures. Just as Jack was on towards others, as well. But they would meet again. It was inevitable.

**

* * *

**

Please review. I would really appreciate it, especially since I've just stayed up the whole night writing this! :D


End file.
